OPS Weekly Newsletter 11 October 2026
Next week’s meeting is our first print competition so please get your prints ready for the 20 October meeting.
And the winner was… Phil Joyce, whose name was pulled out of the Chanel diamond-encrusted clutch bag and who has won Ivor’s wonderful Carmine Bee-Eaters framed print.
We have a ‘Talks Portal’ – fancy name for a spreadsheet – where members can add the names and contact details of speakers that they would like to be included in the programme. If you have any recommendations please add them here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vygkbg7dUF2e0dqF8PfPyfT1caZrnWJB5EEG9bBrTjs/edit?tab=t.0
Last meeting held Tuesday 22 September: Exploring the Ethics of Photography with Mick Yates
Mick started his talk with a quick resume of his varied career and his multi-national family. He has visited 78 countries, not only visited but lived in quite a few of them. He is keen to ensure the number he has visited does not overtake the number of years he’s lived on the Earth.
He warned that some of the images come with a ‘content warning’ of what is about to be seen.
The first image was taken by Julia Le Duc who has covered the American border crisis as a correspondent for La Jornada, one of Mexico City’s leading newspapers. Her photograph was of a Salvadoran father and his 23-month-old daughter lying face down in the water of the Rio Grande after attempting to swim over to Brownsville in the US. The photograph became world news on 24 June 2019. In response Fox News said ‘it serves them right’, or words to that effect. Mick’s point was that photographs can be interpreted in many ways and over many years.
He then showed two versions of the famous Roger Fenton Crimea war photograph Valley of the Shadow of Death. The original had a sizable number of cannon balls in a dip at the side of a track. The second one had even more cannon balls, this time on the track. Image enhancing has been going on for a long time.
Mick said an image can been seen to have ‘Correspondence to reality’ – the human tragedy of a father and two year old daughter drowning – or ‘Coherence with what we think’ – two migrants deserving what they got.
He then explained that out of the myriad of philosophical schools listed he would be focussing on just two: Virtue ethics – human flourishing (Aristotle and Plato) and Veil of Ignorance – blind justice (John Rawls). All the consequentialists fans of Jeremy Betham and John Stuart Mill in the room kept their silence…
Mick then showed a perfectly composed image of someone diving to earth in front of a sky scraper. It was 9/11 and the person was jumping to his death. This image was ‘corresponding’ to reality but the image was banned by all the newspaper editors because it did not ‘cohere’ with their view, and the national view, that those in the Twin Towers were heroes.
He then went on to list a number of areas of photography that we need to understand in terms of ethics. He was at pains to emphasise that he was not telling us what the right thing to do but to consider the ethics of taking photographs.
Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother photograph taken in Nipomo, California was examined in terms of all the shots of the session. None were like the famous pose of the image. Lange had asked the two children with the mother to look away and took the shot as the mother looked into the distance. All the previous shots had people looking at the camera. Lange wanted ‘coherence’ with what she thought.
Mick went on to look at ‘meaning’ in photography. He looked at Robert Frank’s book The Americans which was looking at what America was really like. He compared this view of America with Cindy Sherman’s who photographed herself in various guises re-enacting what Americans do.
Time and place were important too regarding the ethics of taking photographs.
He used the work of Edward Relph who argued that a place is more than a physical location. It gains meaning through people’s experiences, memories, emotions and relationships with it. Our sense of being an insider or outsider affects how we experience that place.
1. Insideness
Insideness is the feeling of belonging to a place and being meaningfully connected to it.
Existential insideness: A deep, often unselfconscious sense of belonging. A place feels familiar, comfortable and part of who you are.
Empathetic insideness: Trying to understand a place by appreciating the experiences and perspectives of the people who belong there.
Behavioural insideness: Knowing how to behave in a place and understanding its routines, customs and practical layout.
For example, a person who has lived in a village for many years might feel deeply connected to its streets, local traditions and community.
2. Outsideness
Outsideness describes feeling detached from a place, as though you do not belong or are separate from its meaning and everyday life.
Existential outsideness: Feeling alienated from a place, with little sense of belonging or connection.
Objective outsideness: Viewing a place from the outside, as a physical location that can be described or measured rather than personally experienced.
Incidental outsideness: Experiencing a place temporarily or superficially, without developing a meaningful attachment to it.
For example, a tourist may see a town mainly as a collection of attractions, while local residents understand its history, social relationships and everyday significance.
On the issue of ‘gaze’ – how we come to a scene with pre-conceptions of which we do not question – Mick looked at the American photographer Edward S Curtis’s work with Native Americans. National Geographic admitted that it was racist because, although his photographs documented Native American peoples and cultures in the early 20th century, he sometimes staged scenes, altered images and presented Indigenous people as an unchanging past, potentially romanticising their cultures and obscuring the realities of modern Indigenous life.
Mick then upped the ‘content warning’ to number 11 on the scale by showing images of children’s decapitated hands and feet. Documenting these atrocities was the work of Alice Seeley Harris who pioneered humanitarian photography by photographing the brutal exploitation and mutilation of Congolese people under King Leopold II, helping to generate international outrage and pressure for reform. Despite the impact of her images, her contribution was largely overlooked in the history of photography, with greater recognition often given to male campaigners and her husband.
A very stimulating talk full of awful subjects but great photographs.
Next meeting Tuesday 3 October: Tequila, Mezcal & More: Stories from Mexico An evening with award-winning photojournalist and author Anna Bruce
Anna is a captivating storyteller, bringing to life the people, landscapes, traditions and culture of Mexico through her photography and first-hand experience. Her particular expertise is the world of mezcal, where she has spent more than a decade documenting the producers, families and communities behind this extraordinary spirit.
Her acclaimed book, Tequila, Mezcal & More, has been shortlisted for the 2026 André Simon Drinks Award, named one of Forbes’ Best Wine and Spirits Books of 2025, and selected as a Top 10 nominee for the 2026 Spirited Awards.
Upcoming meetings
20 October: Print Competition No 1. Our judge is Peter Cox
27 October: Once a slag with Philippa James
3 November: Workshop: Creative Portrait Photography: Thinking Outside The Box with Kieran Hunt
10 November: Iconic photographs that would bomb in club photo competitions with Mathew Lodge
17 November: Wildlife Photography – How Hard Can It Be? Helen Webb
Photographic events in and around Oxford
Colonial Views of India: Photographs by Eugene Clutterbuck Impey
This free photographic exhibition in G29 offers a rare glimpse of late 19th century India. Ends 26 October. Ashmolean Museum, Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PH
Photographic events further afield
In Focus: James Clifford Kent & Bharat Patel – Riverside Studios
12 October & 2 November 2026, 7.15pm
Exploring themes of belonging, healthcare and marginalisation, their work spans care environments in Cuba and the UK and the lives of India’s nomadic and de-notified nomadic communities. Kent and Patel will share their approaches to building trust, documenting sensitive human stories, and the role of documentary photography today.
James Clifford Kent is a London-based photographic artist whose research-led practice explores culture, health and social change. He is the author of Aesthetics and the Revolutionary City and is currently developing his first photobook.
Bharat Patel is a documentary photographer using the camera as a tool to connect with people in overlooked, difficult, or marginalised conditions. His work focuses on labour, survival, and human dignity, capturing the quiet strength in spaces society often ignores.
Tickets
£5, book at riversidestudios.co.uk
See full list of exhibitions here: https://amateurphotographer.com/latest/articles/best-photography-exhibitions-to-see/
General photographic interest
Ian Berry obituary
Photojournalist whose arresting images captured human disaster from Vietnam to Aberfan, and most notably in apartheid South Africa
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/oct/11/ian-berry-obituary
Animals and their people: country shows across the UK – in pictures
Photographer Irina Werning, who grew up in rural Argentina surrounded by animals, has spent the summer photographing animals and their people at county and agricultural shows across the UK, from Essex and Kent to Surrey, Gloucestershire and Buckinghamshire, a project she began in Argentina.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2026/oct/11/animals-people-country-shows-across-uk-in-pictures
‘The weirdos were taking over!’ Tate Britain relives the 1990s – in pictures
A new exhibition curated by Edward Enniful looks back on the thrilling decade before smartphones, when art, music and fashion came together with a bang
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2026/oct/08/tate-britain-the-90s-art-fashion-in-pictures-edward-enniful
These exquisite landscape shots revealing the hidden beauty of Wales are sure to give you inspiration to head out and take photos
Edward Davies picked up photography in 2020. He enjoys photographing landscapes, nature and astro in Wales and capturing its beauty from woodlands and waterfalls to the coast. Having found success in entering Young Amateur Photographer of the Year, he shares more about his work, inspirations and what’s next…